The Volokh Conspiracy

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Free Speech

Trader Joe's Sends Demand Letter over "Traitor Joe" T-Shirts

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


Paul Alan Levy (Public Citizen) reports on the threat, and on his response. "No reasonable person is going to think that your client had any involvement in the creation of this image, or that it approves of this image in any way." (Sounds right to me.) And, "Trademark law aside, McCall's use of the image to comment on the President …, while playing on the name of a leading grocery store chain, is speech squarely protected by the First Amendment." (That too.) Read more in Levy's post.

Eugene Volokh is the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and a Visiting Fellow (Senior Fellow starting May 2024) at the Hoover Institution (Stanford). Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any educational institution.